PADDY CRERAND received the surprise of his life when Jose Mourinho greeted him like a long lost friend before his Old Trafford scouting mission on Sunday.

Mourinho, it turns out, is an avid watcher of former player-turned-pundit Crerand on United’s club television channel.

“He told me he gets MUTV and Chelsea TV in Spain, as well as Italian, Portuguese and English football,” said Crerand. “I had never met him before so I was surprised when we were introduced before the Everton game and he knew all about me.”

Mourinho did not let on if he knew that Crerand was a key figure in the only United team to knock Real Madrid out of Europe.

Nobby Stiles sorted him out in the first minute of the second half with a challenge – it was more like an assault – that would have got him arrested, let alone sent off, in this day and age

Paddy Crerand

This Champions League last-16 tie between the clubs will be the fifth time they have met in Europe’s top club tournament and of the previous four encounters, United have emerged aggregate winners only once – in the semi-finals in 1968 when Sir Matt Busby’s team became the first English club to win the competition.

Crerand said: “We had won the first leg at Old Trafford with a solitary goal from George Best, so we were obviously apprehensive about the second leg in the Bernabeu, which held 125,000 fans in those days.

“And we were even more apprehensive when we were 3-1 down at half-time. They had given us the runaround. We couldn’t get near them – and the goal we scored was an own-goal.

“At half-time Matt was not impressed by the way we had played.

“He said we had tried to be defensive and it just wasn’t Manchester United. He told us to go out and have a go at them and to think of the score as 3-2 and not 3-1. And that’s what happened.

“They had a great player called Amancio, who had been brilliant in the first half. But Nobby Stiles sorted him out in the first minute of the second half with a challenge – it was more like an assault – that would have got him arrested, let alone sent off, in this day and age.

“Believe me, you’ve never seen anything like it – but you never saw Amancio for the rest of the game. You could get away with those sort of things back then.

“From then on we were charging. When we got the second goal from David Sadler, what a lift it was. The amazing thing was Real were more afraid of us than we were of them in the second half. Maybe Nobby clobbering Amancio frightened them a bit. If it had stayed like that [3-3 on aggregate] we would have had to replay on ‘neutral’ territory in Portugal two days later because the away-goals rule had not been brought in then.

“But we got an equaliser through, of all people, our centre-half Bill Foulkes. I took a throw-in down the line to George and was trying to get inside in the hope that he would get along the byline and pass it back to me or somebody else. He did just that and there was Bill striding into the penalty area to tuck the ball home.

“God only knows where he came from. He never used to cross the halfway line. He only scored nine goals in nearly 700 appearances for the club.

“You just felt it was destined for us to reach the final because Bill, of course, had survived Munich 10 years earlier. After his goal it was a canter for us. Real had totally gone. Teams simply didn’t go to the Bernabeu and do what we had done to them.”

Nobby Stiles has a joke with Paddy Crerand in the showers

Crerand will be summarising for MUTV in the Bernabeu tomorrow and believes United can match the heroes of 1968 – although he admits the big danger is Cristiano Ronaldo.

“You can’t use unfair means to stop Ronaldo – you certainly can’t do what Nobby did to Amancio,” he said. “If you get a strong referee you will be in trouble. I’m wondering if there will be a man-marker – Phil Jones for instance.

“I fancy United over the two legs with the way they are playing at the moment and the fact Real have not been so good this season.

“An away goal is vital, though. United are capable of getting a draw – and hopefully it is a score draw. Then you would hope the fans would carry the team through at Old Trafford.”